Thursday, June 04, 2009

Denial, Despair and Hope

I am reading No Place Left to Bury the Dead. It's subtitle is "Denial, Despair and Hope in the African AIDS Pandemic". So far I have only read the denial and despair parts.

I have to say its frustrating to read of the despair. Don't get me wrong. It's a book everyone should read. Heaven forbid that we continue to turn our back on our neighbors in Africa because its too painful to engage in their sorrows.

The first third of the book (where I am now) is centered around the life of one woman in Lesotho who is HIV+ and the realities of this epidemic on this tiny country that is encompassed by South Africa. It's frustrating though to read things like how the very people who most could use proper medical care and antiviral drugs to keep them alive can't afford them. Or knowing a widow will lose her home because her son has died of AIDs.

"Arise, LORD! Lift up your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless.... you, O God, do see trouble and grief; you consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to you; you are the helper of the fatherless. You hear, O LORD, the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them, and you listen to their cry, defending the fatherless and the oppressed, in order that man, who is of the earth, may terrify no more."